In the following interview, Pinter discusses his work with Carey Perloff, a director of several of Pinter's plays.

Harold Pinter is telling me about the characters in his extraordinary new satire Celebration. “I don't know what you'd call their particular accent, but I do know they all enjoy words and using words. They love it, and that's it.” Pause. He grins. “One also has to remember, of course—and this is all a question of balance and degree—that they're all very drunk.”

Pinter and I are sharing a long, late-July lunch in New York, not far from Lincoln Center, where a critically acclaimed festival of his work is underway. Pinter has intersected with my life at crucial moments: He was the writer that first inspired me to choose a career in the...